Tomasz Szmydt

Tomasz Szmydt (born 27 April 1970 in Białystok, eastern Poland ) is a Polish jurist, employed as a judge in the Regional Administrative Court (Wojewódzki Sąd Administracyjny) in Warsaw.

He adjudicated in the law court's Department (Wydział) II on access to classified information in regard of members of the Polish military and intelligence.

On 1 May 2024, via Turkey, he defected to Belarus, where he applied for political asylum to 'rest [...] in this open and friendly country.' The judge most probably was extracted from Poland by the Belarusian security forces.

Szmydt would have rather defected to Russia, but due to the short-visit visa waiver for Polish citizens to enter Belarus, he chose the latter country to avoid raising the Polish Foreign Intelligence Agency's suspicions.

On 6 May 2024, the Belarusian state-owned governmental news agency BelTA held a press conference in Minsk, during which Szmydt praised the Belarusian authorities, proposing that Belarus is ‘a country with great potential,’ headed by ‘a very wise leader.’ Szmydt explained that he fled to Belarus in order to 'protest to the Polish authorities who under the influence of the US and the UK are leading the country to war.' At this conference, Szmydt presented his signed letter of resignation from the post of a judge in the Regional Administrative Court in Warsaw.

(The Regional Court announced that they were unaware of this letter, while Szmydt was on his annual leave through 10 May 2024. )

The unprecedented situation is assessed in Poland by the authorities and mass media as treason.

Szmydt is lambasted as a 'traitor.' The Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Radosław Sikorski and Poland’s National Security Bureau (BBN) chief pl:Jacek Siewiera consent, the strong suspicion being that this defection is already used for the sake of Russia's hybrid warfare against the West.

This suspicion rests on Szmydt's appeal to Polish politicians that they should ‘resume dialog with [Belarusian] President Lukashenka and Russia.’ The Kremlin's leading propagandist Vladimir Solovyov also invited Szmydt to his primetime program, in which the judge participated twice.

Apart from facing potential criminal charges, recently Szmydt was deciding on state functionaries' access to top secret NATO and EU documents.

Now Szmydt hopes to meet President Lukashenka in person.

Meanwhile, it transpired that the judge had sojourned in Belarus in June 2023 evoking no reaction on the part of the Polish counterintelligence.

After the initial shock, the reactions in Poland resulted in further polarization of the political scene.

Accusations are traded between the current pro-democratic government and the formerly ruling Law and Justice party (now in opposition) on who is responsible for Szmydt's recruitment to provide intelligence to Russia and Belarus.

It is one of effects that the Russian propaganda seeks to achieve in a targeted democratic country, namely, 'exacerbating polarisation,' with an eye to 'to undermine democracy.'

As reported by the propaganda-led Russian and Belarusian mass media, on 7 May 2024, Szmydt changed the presumable cause of his defection, citing the danger of 'physical liquidation' in Poland.

A day later, he added that upon return to Poland he would be incarcerated on trumped up changes, or would be assassinated in a staged motoring accident or suicide.

Hence, Szmydt also asked for the Belarusian president's protection, which should also be extended over his relatives, who remain in Poland.

Furthermore, Szmydt requested the Belarusian authorities to deliver to the Polish Ambassy in Minsk his letter of resignation from the law court in Warsaw.

In line with the Russian propaganda's typical modus operandi, the presumed causes of Szmydt's defection are multiplied.

Among others, it is proposed, the judge was persecuted for 'telling the truth to power,' that an official probe into his spying for Belarus was imminent, which could result in incarceration, that he maintained 'our Slavic peoples can live in harmony', that he 'refused to hate the Russians,' or that he was compelled to adjudicate in 'breach of his civic conscience.'

After discussing the 'causes' of his defection, the Minsk and Moscow propagandists began extracting from Szmydt normative judgements about Poland.

The judge proposed that 'the Polish authorities behave abnormally,' 'Poland is not an independent country,' or that 'Polish politicians politicians represent the interests of the United States and the United Kingdom.' He also agreed that Poland's political system is similar to that of Nazi Germany, and stated that it is more authoritarian than what is observed in Belarus and Russia.

In 1996 Tomasz Szmydt graduated with a degree in law from the Białystok branch of the University of Warsaw.

He began his work as a jurist in the County Court (Sąd rejonowy) in Ciechanów, where he was nominated to the post of a judge (sędzia) in 2001.

In 2009 he was to the post of a judge in the District Court (Sąd okręgowy) in Płock.

In 2011, Szmydt continued his career as a judge in the Regional Administrative Court in Warsaw.

In this capacity Poland's de facto ruler (in 2015-2023) Jarosław Kaczyński corresponded with Szmydt's wife.

Now, the suspicion is that Russia's intelligence service controlled the Kasta, as part of a broader network of Russian (and Belarusian) secret agents in Poland and across Europe.

Szmydt's superior Piebiak announced that the former was a Russian spy, and added that Russian spies had infiltrated the Polish judiciary.

On 8 May 2017, the judge was seconded to the Polish Ministry of Justice.

When this secondment came to an end, Deputy Minister of Justice pl:Łukasz Piebiak prolonged it and sent Szmydt to join the National Council of the Judiciary (Polish: Krajowa Rada Sądownictwa, KRS).

Szmydt speaks native-level Russian.

The mass media remind that Szmydt's defection to Belarus is similar to that of pl:Emil Czeczko.

Facing criminal charges, this soldier desrted and fled to Belarus in late 2021.

The Belarusian authorities paraded him as a 'proof' of the country's stringent observance of human rights, before the soldier's unexplained death in 2022.

In 2018, Szmydt became a member of the Polish Minister of Justice's team for ‘optimizing’ the system of judicial disciplinary actions.

In 2019, it was revealed that Szmydt, together with his wife Emilia Szmydt, was a key person (see the diagram ) in the WhatsApp private group Kasta (Polish for ‘caste’), composed of pro-government judges and journalists.

In conjunction with the then Polish Deputy Minister of Justice Piebiak, this group organized, carried out and oversaw the carrying out of social media and online actions of hate speech mobilization and discreditation (character assassination) against independent judges and those who opposed the Law and Justice (PiS) government's breaches of the Polish Constitution.

The then ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party protected Szmydt and other Kasta members from prosecution.